Train Blog
April 14, 2025
y mini purred down tree-lined Lakemont, the recent session behind me. I drove quietly, no radio, no jumble of thoughts, but the wind rippling through the open windows. My mind was still as a pond, no plans or formulations. I wasn’t even thinking of a blog. Flatline. It was funny but the session didn’t disappoint me or thrill me. I didn’t consider the things I should have done (or words I shouldn’t have said). It comes down to one thing. That session was perfect. This comes on the heels of Kyle and me running over at the West Virginia Northern […]
April 6, 2025
t’s all about rules, I guess. Weekend of a stress-inducing show – stressful because I wasn’t allowed to lift more than five pounds with my right hand due to post-surgery rules. This made me pretty useless, so I got the useless job of being the “show boss” (i.e, supervisor). Without Steve there (he was on another of his many vacations) and no prior show boss in attendance, I was rather on my own. Oh, I’ve done just about ever show we’ve attended by not as the “official” show boss. My team got there at 7pm (well, most of it, anyway). […]
March 27, 2025
t was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But doesn’t every OpsLog start like this? The important thing here is that we gradually get better. In prepping the photographs for this blog, I noticed a number of properly-done background things (such as cars off-spotted correctly). As simple as it seems, it means that our operators are learning. Every session is a bit better than the last. And so, in this blog, I’ll be listing the lessons we (or, at least, “I”) learned. You’ll see them in bold. Okay, from my point of view, I came on […]
March 24, 2025
came into this session with determination. The day before we’d operated over at the Virginia Southwestern. Some of the operators were new, some timid, and some.. well, “some”. At one point we had four L&N trains in the CTC-controlled shared trackage, and two more snippy Southern trains trying to get through. Since I controlled the turnouts from the panel, I set up a pretty neat lap siding pass for two long coal trains to get around Kyle’s mine shifter. But the two crews were timid – even with warrants all the way to Atlanta staging, even with all turnouts set, […]
March 23, 2025
t was such a nice morning. Came out of the house as the sun broke over the trees, breath steaming in the cold as I made my way to the car. Swung by the coffee shop to pick up a cup. Dropped by Zach’s place to mailbag him for the ride out – an informal meeting of the ONT Operations Committee. Happy to say while we rode out, we might have cracked the steel mill output dilemma, as well as tidying up the freight flow across our club’s bridge route. Time for a quick meal in Wendy’s before heading over […]
March 17, 2025
hen I was a small lad, I dreamed of dispatching. The idea of trains ordered to meet other trains at passing sidings, of rolling through stations, that was a really cool image. It was an unrealized dream. And now? Today on the New Haven Highland Division, dispatching was like Donkey Kong. The entire day I was running up ramps and jumping over barrels, tormented by a host of huge monkeys beating their chests. Really, I was wedged in a corner behind a panel that didn’t make a lot of sense at times, yelling across the room or squinting up at […]
March 9, 2025
ait, wait, wait. That’s all railroading was sometimes. The engineer for 101 South yawned through his bushy beard, the setting sun painting the right side of his lead unit, reflecting off the shiny refrigerated cars behind him, turning their white and orange flanks almost toyish in its light. Already the track-side buildings were silhouetted, their long shadows hiding the grubby weeds and litter along the Florida East Coast main. Fortunately he was running south with empty reefers; while he wouldn’t have time-critical oranges losing value, there were still schedule commitments to keep. It was the height of harvest and they […]
March 6, 2025
retty simple one for today. Got an invite from Tom Wilson to run on his enjoyable Pittsburgh & West Virginia, a sprawling steel mill run with lots of outlying coal mines and some connecting lines (Union RR) that I still don’t think I understand. Happily, he finally corrected his railroad to be geographically correct (with East and West on the right ends) and screw the magnetic board (which I never use (and which he forgot to set out for me)). So he invited a bunch of other retirees (which speaks well about retirement) and a couple of out-of-town visitors for […]
March 2, 2025
hat I’m going to tell you can save your life!” This was my attention-getting opener for my clinic on Time Table & Train Order and, as hoped, really got attention and jacked everyone up in their seats. Al Sohl held this clinic/open house at his place – it wasn’t really an NMRA “official” event, just his club hosting clinics and an op session for people to have fun. I was third up; Eric M and Chip P had already gone (very good clinics on how the Western Bay scenery and how to present to judges for your show-pieces in working towards […]
February 27, 2025
f the club has a motto for operations, it’s “Work it out on the ground”. Last night, it was more like “Wring it out of the Clown” with West-Side Dispatcher as the clown. Another “Have a beer when I get home” night at the old clubhouse. So the session started out well enough. We were running an LV Interchange train, a run that we’ll see if we can keep up with it. It’s a bit time-challenged but yes, it might work. But I’d talked things out with the locals (Mingo and Zanesville) and made a pinky promise with 927 (ZV) […]